Well my laptop crashed on Wednesday - so far as I can figure out I've lost everything (and no - I didn't do backups). My own silly fault I suppose but I have been so underwhelmed by the tech support from HP. The basic problem is that the computer gets to the Windows part of the boot and falls over and restarts again and goes round and round and round in this continuous loop. The helpful email support sent me a microsoft page telling me how to fix the problem - all very interesting but as I commented - I don't even have a way to get to the DOS prompt let alone do anything else. When I emailed this back the ever helpful 'Sam' told me how to get to the DOS prompt. Apparently you click on the "Start" button, click on Run and ....... Well yes Sam, that would be terrific but if the computer actually got to the windows screen with the Start button - I WOULDN'T HAVE A BLOODY PROBLEM!
Oh - that Sam-I-Am, that Sam-I-Am. I do not like that Sam-I-Am.
Haven't heard from Sam since I pointed that one out. The resolution appears that the only way to fix the problem is to wipe the whole computer and lose all my data which is not a very acceptable result to me. They do this really clever thing now where they partition the hard disk and set aside a portion that allows you to recover if your PC fails. This is very clever and saves the fifty cents it would cost them to provide you with the software ON DISK. The problem is when you are in a position such as the one I am in - you have to wipe out the entire PC to get it to work again because you don't have any disks to boot from. Brilliant!
Did I mention I hate that Sam-I-Am?
So now I am on my husband's old laptop which runs Mozilla Firefox. I use to use Microsoft Internet Explorer (call me a weird but I actually quite like using it as I've had problems with Mozilla Firefox).
I am now horrified to learn that my blog is a great big mess when I look at it in Firefox with things all over the place. Quelle horreur! I shall attempt to fix it up - but if you are looking at it in Explorer and it goes haywire in that let me know won't you - you know like you'd tell someone that their skirt is tucked up in their undies before they leave the ladies restroom?
So it's been a fun couple of days - I've lost every photo from my PC (family ones - the kids - argh) although fortunately I have a few on this blog so I will have to screen scrape them off even though they will be low res).
Had a couple of virtual visitors to the new house - Judi and Erica (friends from the doll world although I do also know Erica in "real" life) and Jodi who has a wonderful blog called Cote de Texas. She is an uber doyenne of stylish decorating with fab taste in everything. I left a comment on a post in her blog - so she popped in for a visit. Kind of wish she'd waited till I'd done something about the brick walls, pink paint and green carpet - feeling like a bit of an Aussie dag (which I am but - well - you know).
So that's it for now - autumn has come to Sydney early -it's cool and crisp today - beautiful and sunny - that terrible February humidity didn't come for once (yay!) No doubt we'll get a couple more hot ones in the mix - but it's kind of exciting to know that summer's over.
